The remote accessability of people and information is continually increasing. A person now has at his disposal many different communication devices, such as a telephone, cellular telephone, pager, facsimile, and e-mail. However, despite the benefits of accessibility, being easily accessible often becomes difficult to manage or even burdensome, especially for service providers. For example, doctors are now readily accessible, such as through a simple telephone call. However, by answering and responding to each such call, a doctor has little time to tend to the patients in his office. Therefore, the doctor must balance the responsibilities of being accessible to callers while still providing prompt and timely service to the patients in his office. One solution to this problem is to have a staff member schedule times that the doctor can call back the patient. But the cost of a staff member to perform this task can be too expensive.
In addition to upsetting his and his patient's schedules, the doctor is typically not reimbursed for the time that he and/or his staff spend on the telephone. Although most patients would not like to be charged for telephone calls, in actuality they are indirectly paying for each call. For example, the doctor is forced to adjust his rates to account for the time taken to handle these calls. Also, the excessive time some patients spend waiting in the doctor's office is directly attributable to such calls. To resolve this dilemma, some doctors have tried to charge callers for receiving calls. However, there are many problems associated with charging for small increments of time. For one, there is no accurate way to track the time for each call that is reliable and accepted by most insurance companies or Medicare. Also, the amount of time for a person to prepare, calculate and bill for the calls negates any benefits from billing.
Therefore, what is needed is a system that allows the doctor to easily and automatically schedule call back times.
Furthermore what is needed is a system that keeps track of telephone time and other small charges and bills patients accordingly.